Mississippi River Day 3: Minneapolis to Dubuque

This article is part of a series about our recent vacation traveling down the Mississippi River. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.

Today is when we actually hit the road. After a short walk across the Stone Bridge in Minneapolis, we drove to St. Paul to visit the Minnesota state capitol. We also made a stop (shortened by a lack of parking meter change) at the Mississippi River Visitor Center, located at the science museum in St. Paul.

Mississippi River near Prescott, Wisconsin

We crossed into Wisconsin at Prescott, stopping at a visitor center and continuing down the Wisconsin side of the Great River Road. At the suggestion of the visitor center docent, we stopped for lunch at Nesbitt’s Nursery, which appears to be more of a restaurant and gift shop than a garden center (or a child care facility). The food, locally prepared from scratch, was excellent; I highly recommend the lentil stew. We then proceeded (after a wrong turn took across the Mississippi twice more) to Nelson to a recommended creamery for ice cream and to buy some Wisconsin cheese for our picnics. We made one more crossing into Minnesota at Winona to pick up some groceries for the trip.

After all those stops, it was getting late, so we pushed the rest of the way to Dubuque, mostly through Wisconsin since that was most direct, before arriving about 9:30 pm.